I recall reading that at one point, Peter Jackson & co were going to have Sauron appear in person outside the Black Gate and fight Aragorn. Then they came to their senses (thank goodness!) but still used some of the footage of Aragorn fighting a large opponent and simply replaced Sauron with an Olog-hai (troll). I would have been steaming mad if they had gone with the original idea.

Issachar: yeah, they were going to have Sauron in his original body come fight Aragorn, but right before the release of the movie they quickly covered the image with a troll. Thank God.
Love the comic, Shamus!

Whoa! I’ve had pretty much the same reaction to pretty much the same situation (horrific, unbeatable armored hulk – can our heroes possibly prevail?).

Of course, it’s perfectly in-character for a paladin to be ludicrously enthusiastic about facing a death knight and legions of undead, when the rest of the party is filled with horror. It was just role-playing. That’s my explanation. Really.

1. Great work done here Shamus. I just love this comic and last month I spend a lot of my time reading it and laughing.

2. I love the way you turned all those ridiculous scenes from the films in D&D actions.

3. The Witch-King has his flaming sword, Frodo has Sting, but in Book its clearly stated that the swords of other Hobbits (Daggers of Westernesse), Gandalf (Glamdring) and of course Anduril (..the sword of Elendil filled Orcs and Men with fear, for it shone with the light of the sun and of the moon, and it was named Narsil) also glowed in light.

The stats of Anduril (check DMotR: CII); Keen, Haste, at least +5 Enchantment…that Olog-Hai had no chance…but in the film…horrific.

Heh, 1/3rd breed. I had a discussion with some friends about how this could be possible (we were playing munchkin+expansions, and a third breed card came up). The closest we came was something like 3/8. Then again, it waas off the top of our heads, we didn’t go too much indepth on this.

The sad… sad thing about this comic is, it would be about an infinite times more funny if after laughing at each one… I don’t remember some time that a similar situation had come up in my game experiences…

11 EmeraldTiara Says:
Issachar: yeah, they were going to have Sauron in his original body come fight Aragorn, but right before the release of the movie they quickly covered the image with a troll. Thank God.

So, how would have that tied with the spotlight throwing eye? I tought Jackson’s interperation was the eye was Sauron himself. He had two bodies? :o

“The troll is directly from the book; Pippin kills it. (Though I don’t recall if the books states that the troll goes after Aragorn.)”

The troll chieftain that Pippin kills is part of a wave of trolls, attacking at the beginning of the assault during a wave of arrows. It doesn’t go after Aragorn, but instead goes for Pippin’s friend Beregond (another minor character left out of the movie, probably for the best) when Pippin kills it, gets crushed by it, and passes out after hearing the Eagles coming.

The story about having Aragorn fight Sauron is true, but it’s indeed possible that this bit was a source of inspiration for having him fight a troll instead, when they recognized Sauron as not being an option.

Also (doesn’t this place have an edit button?) the thing sticking out from the troll is just a tower in the background. If I recall correctly, they were going to show Sauron in his old beautiful form (Annatar, Lord of Gifts, a form he lost in the Akallabeth, another reason I’m glad they didn’t go through with it). So he wouldn’t be wearing that ugly crown he had in the beginning of the first movie, in any case.

In the book the troll which Pippin kills is going for Beregond, soldier of Gondor. Beregond was one of the cooler minor characters who was sadly left out of the movie–he and his son hung out with Pippin, and Beregond helped save Faramir from being burned by Denethor. Beregond and his son were also perhaps the only regular (as in not a lord or of special birth, etc.) humans we got to know.

Pete actually choreographed (sp?) the fight between Sauron and Aragorn… Shamus mentions it in this very webcomic I believe. You can witness it on the RotK dvd Special Edition Disc 2.

I think the important thing to remember here is that the scene didn’t get filmed with Sauron then changed to a troll, as has been suggested here. It was storyboarded to see if the idea would fly, at which point it was decided to drop it. Not one frame of the “Sauron fight” was rendered.

Jackson didn’t “ruin” anything. He had a look at the idea and…*rejected* it. This is what the creative process is about.

The books couldn’t simply be translated into a movie format. Books can never go straight to film and remain compelling to a wider audience. The movies had to appeal to more people than had read the books to ensure that the next one in the chain actually made it to the screen. The fact is that not enough people have read these books to make a definitive movie financially possible solely from their support.

For an example of what happens if you try and “film the book”, take a gander at the latest Harry Potter thing which is incomprehensible if you didn’t read the books – like me – and thoroughly disappointing – according to my wife and daughter – if you did because of all the stuff that had to be left out to make it all fit into a financially viable package. All because 7 books = 7 films in the minds of the studio.

C’mon guys. Be critical of the LOTR movies if you want, but for goshsakes be critical of what got made, not what got thrown in the crapper.

If it wasn’t for the DVD versions adding in all sorts of background stuff you’d never have known about this anyway.

I understand the necessity of making alterations of a book to fit the screen (Though for the record, I didn’t find Harry Potter 5 to be incomprehensible, though they did sometimes just assume that we knew certain characters, though I did find the plot kinda…sucked, I suspect that’s a problem with the source material.), but P.J. made a number of decisions that were…questionable. (Like, say, the entire Paths of the Dead sequence.)

That said, they did more than storyboard the “Sauron” fight. They went so far as to “film” it – by which I mean, having Aragorn fight empty air. They never added any CG to that sequence though, and adapted it to become the Troll fight. I have no issues with that, really. Though I wish the films overall had been better.

It was storyboarded to see if the idea would fly, at which point it was decided to drop it. Not one frame of the “Sauron fight” was rendered.

Jackson didn’t “ruin” anything. He had a look at the idea and…*rejected* it. This is what the creative process is about.

The bluescreen footage with Aragorn was filmed. They just cgi’d the troll instead of Sauron. Also, all the footage where the Eye stares at them and the whole party squints in the glare was originally meant to be the pretty form of Sauron (as Calaron says above) dazzling them with his glowy white prettiness.

(yes, I’m enough of a geek to have listened to all the director’s commentary)